An American withdrawal from the World Health Organization could wreak profound damage on the global effort to eradicate polio and could undermine the world’s ability to detect and respond to disease threats, health experts warned.

The experts, from the United States and beyond, are aghast at President Trump’s announced intention to leave the organization, which he publicly blames for not being tougher on China in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic — at a time when he himself was praising China’s unprecedented efforts to control the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

If it leaves the organization, which was established in 1948, the United States will give up an outsized role in the global health agency and the setting of global health priorities.

has always had an extraordinary influence at the WHO — I mean to the extent that other countries have complained about American influence,” Ilona Kickbusch, a long-time former WHO official and chair of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.

In fact, when the WHO underwent a series of reforms following its catastrophic early response to the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak — including setting up a permanent health emergencies program — a lot of the changes implemented were made at the behest of the United States, said Ashish Jha, director of Harvard’s Global Health Institute.

As well, when the WHO has established emergency committees to determine whether this or that disease outbreak constitutes a global threat — a public health emergency of international concern, or a PHEIC — there is virtually always at least one American on the panel.

has played an outsized role in global health … across a range of issues,” Jha said.

Withdrawing during a pandemic — or even threatening, should the president back down, or Congress find a way to block the move — is unconscionable, said Tom Bollyky, director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

withdraws and weakens the WHO, that in turn will undermine the health agency’s ability to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, potentially prolonging it.

has placed high hopes on early access to vaccine for Americans, the reality is that as long as Covid-19 rages around the world, supply chains will be disrupted, the global economy will be stressed and international travel will remain perilous.

Beyond the pandemic, health programs that the U.S.

Heymann, who for a time oversaw the global polio eradication program, fears that effort in particular will suffer if the U.S.

It is a critical time for the long-standing effort to rid the world of polio; while only two countries — Afghanistan and Pakistan — continue to see spread of wild polio, vaccination efforts have been halted because of the pandemic.

And it would be a shame not only for the United States, but for Rotary International, which has provided so much funding for that as well,” said Heymann, an American who heads a committee that advises the WHO’s health emergencies program.

When a organization this large hides facts from the world that could have saved thousands of lives, they need checked